‘Only the people can defend this struggle’: the politics of the everyday, extrajudicial executions and civil society in Mathare, Kenya

Jones, Peris S., Kimari, Wangui and Ramakrishnan, Kavita (2017) ‘Only the people can defend this struggle’: the politics of the everyday, extrajudicial executions and civil society in Mathare, Kenya. Review of African Political Economy, 44 (154). pp. 559-576. ISSN 1740-1720

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Abstract

Though a perennial problem in postcolonial Kenya, extrajudicial executions (EJE) show few signs of ending and in recent years are even accelerating amongst young men in informal settlements. Avenues for legal, institutional and civil society redress, nominally expanded in recent years, display an ongoing tendency towards disconnection from the grassroots. A case study from Mathare, Nairobi, seeks explanations for the lack of urgency in addressing EJE and also the limited effectiveness of responses to them that are rooted in the political economy of interests of civil society actors, which tends to perpetuate these ‘excluded spaces’ of the slum. The authors do so, however, by exploring one particular struggle to show how frustration with civil society is being used by social justice activists to articulate ideas of ‘everyday’ violence to mobilise for change that disrupts the apparent normalisation of EJE.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: kenya,mathare,activists,extrajudicial killings,police,violence,slums,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of International Development
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Migration Research Network
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 18 Aug 2017 05:06
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2022 02:46
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/64565
DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2016.1269000

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